Top Five Finale Special: Series Say Good-Bye to 2011-12 Season

The finales first started showing up about two weeks ago, with the season-closers really beginning to cluster this past week and continuing next week (among the notables: The series finale of “House” this coming Monday night on Fox, and the season finale of “Modern Family” next Wednesday night on ABC).

We may as well begin at the top, with TV’s highest-rated series. Makes sense, right?

1) “NCIS” on CBS: Cliffhangers are all the rage lately with season-enders and “NCIS” was no different this past Tuesday as a bomb went off that endangered the lives of, well, just about everybody.

And, according to the recap we posted here earlier this week, time ran out before this episode’s 19 million viewers could find out who lived and who — gulp — died. See you in September.

2) “Grey’s Anatomy” on ABC: Speaking of TV warhorses, “Grey’s Anatomy” ended its eighth season this past week with a finale episode that took up where the penultimate episode left us a week earlier — in the aftermath of a plane crash. More than 11.4 million viewers tuned in to see what happened in an episode that we recapped right here.

In case you missed it, we have the “Grey’s Anatomy” season finale right here:

3) “Revenge” on ABC: This prime-time soap ended its first season with a finale that drew 6.9 million this Wednesday night at 10/9c. While we happen to think that’s a relatively paltrey number, ABC remains hot on “Revenge” and deemed it worthy of not only a renewal but a new time slot next season where it might fare better — Sunday nights at 9/8c, up against “The Good Wife” on CBS. Meanwhile, the “Revenge” season finale featured a shocking death and a surprising kiss, according to our recap here.

4) “30 Rock” on NBC: Here’s a situation that continues to mystify us — the erosion of “30 Rock’s” audience over the years. This past week’s season finale was as clever, funny and sprightly as this show usually is, and yet, only 2.84 million viewers tuned in. What has happened here? Once upon a time, Tina Fey was the hottest commodity in comedy. And maybe she still is, but her “30 Rock” evidently is not. Oh, well, we plan on sticking by it ’til the end (which will likely be next season).

We liked the season finale and, as Stephen Colbert might say, you can too — right here:

5) “Grimm” on NBC:“Grimm” is another relatively low-rated series that was just given a second-season lease on life, this time by NBC. This fairytale-focused series had its first-season finale Friday night, an episode that drew 5.3 million viewers. We previewed the episode here.